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- The Observer, Sunday 3 February 2008
Hot Chip
Made In The Dark (EMI) £10.99
Hot Chip's last album, The Warning, was an absolute peach. Never obvious, always nagging, it packed a love of R&B, funk, soul and grime into compact doses of electronic pop. It deserved to make its authors - a self-effacing London fivesome - rich and famous men. That didn't quite happen, although there were some overtures from Kylie's creatives that came to nothing.
More fools them. Kylie's X would have been vastly improved by 'Ready For The Floor', now on Hot Chip's third album, Made In The Dark. Like the band's old hit, 'Over And Over', 'Ready For The Floor' makes plain the joys of dance-pop while arching an eyebrow at all that gurning. The chorus - sung in a kitten-smooth near-falsetto by frontman Alexis Taylor - can only be removed from your head by professionals.
There are more like it, too. 'Shake A Fist' is as rowdy a shakedown as this buttoned-up band have attempted. 'One Pure Thought' starts on a post-punk riff, then throws out reggaeton rhythms and 'Macarena' references. DJs will mix it into something by band-of-the-moment Vampire Weekend, another gaggle of jumper-wearing clever clogs doing splendid things to pop.
As third albums require, innovations abound. Many are designed to make Hot Chip's whip-smart meta-pop into something people might buy in Tesco's. Title track 'Made In The Dark' finds Taylor alone with a piano and a muted drumkit, mourning lost love. It's all terribly conventional, lacking the nudges and winks that his band usually bestow on their steals from the mainstream. But its loveliness could well transform Hot Chip into proper heartstring tuggers.
Have they bettered The Warning? Probably not. But Hot Chip have turned their loving subversions of pop music into pop music, plain and simple. Here's hoping they reap the dividends.
